Designer Consignor owner enters plea

An Isabella County judge on Friday ordered a former Mt. Pleasant consignment store owner to pay more than $12,000 in restitution to 34 victims.

Judge William Ervin ordered Caitlyn Barbara Lee to pay half of what the victims claimed in losses after she entered a no contest plea to larceny by conversion between $200 and $1,000.

Lee, who owned Kate’s Designer Consignor on South Mission Street, was facing felony charges of larceny by conversion between $1,000 and $20,000.

Ervin instructed Lee to pay the $12,811.46 in restitution Friday, and ordered a delay of sentence, which will result in the charge being dropped prior to a May 6 sentencing.

If the cashier’s check that Lee used to pay clears, the charge, a one-year misdemeanor, will be dropped.

Lee entered the no contest plea because of civil liability.

A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

Isabella County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Robert Holmes said he agreed to the misdemeanor plea deal in order to return money to the people who left clothing and other items with Lee between October 2011 and October 2012; that is the time frame in which Lee was under investigation by Mt. Pleasant police for allegedly taking items and either not returning them to their owners or not compensating the owners when the merchandise was sold.

While the 34 people listed as victims in the case – some others either came before Lee owned the store or after the cutoff date – they are entitled to half of what they estimated their items to be worth because Lee took a 50 percent cut in sales, Holmes said.

Holmes said he worked out the plea agreement because he wanted victims to be reimbursed and because the case against Lee lacked some vital evidence.

A vast majority of the people who took merchandise to Lee’s store for resale did not possess receipts, contracts or other documentation of the transactions, Holmes said.

“Given the evidentiary concerns that we have with the case and the possibility of acquittal, and no restitution to any of the 34 victims, the parties decided that this would be the most prudent way to proceed,” Holmes said. “Evidentiary concerns in the case was the fact that a majority of the victims did not have receipts, contracts or agreements of any sort.”

Rather than cast the victims to the winds of chance, Holmes said, he opted to enter into the agreement.

Not all of the people who lodged complaints against Lee are incorporated in the restitution because some dealt with the previous owner and others fell outside of the one-year time frame, Holmes said.

After being charged with larceny by conversion more than $20,000, Lee entered a no contest plea to larceny by conversion between $1,00 and $20,000 in March, but withdrew her plea when Judge Mark Duthie said he would not go along with a delay in sentence that would keep her out of jail.

Duthie said at what was to be Lee’s sentencing March 11, following her first plea, the he would not agree to the delay in sentence because of Lee’s criminal past and because she did not take responsibility for allegedly stealing from clients.

Duthie was referring to an attempted larceny by conversion conviction in Clare County, and said during the March hearing that she was involved in a criminal case in Bay County.

(Susan Field can be reached at 989-779-6075, sfield@michigannewspapers.com or follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/susan.k.field.)